Padi Master scuba diver

[diverrex]

From my perspective, the MSD program's goal is simply to keep new divers engaged and retained. I don't think the idea is to make someone think they are a master of anything. Obviously this means that people are active AND spending money on additional training.

I can't count how many people I have met over the years that have taken OW & AOW to go on a trip or something and are never seen or heard from again. They definitely are not diving locally, much less taking any additional continuing education. I have many of these people as "friends" on Facebook. I never see them post about diving at all, much less going diving.

As an instructor, I will pay for the MSD card myself if I have a student take all the required courses with me AND wants to have it. It would be the least I could do after all that, right?

I think people make too big of a deal about this, and belittle it more than they really need to. A lot of you guys sit up there on your high-horse passing judgment on people that have the card.

When you judge someone it says more about you than them.

I also don't quite understand why people get so negative about The MSD card. Isn't it a good idea for people to keep training? And instructors always complain that you can't earn a living teaching so they should be happy that some people take a bunch of classes. I don't think I've heard anyone brag about getting MSD and actually believe they are a Master Diver. I think they know it just marks a milestone of number of courses taken and to them at least a certain commitment to the activity.

I would prefer for AOW to be called OW2, simply the second course after OW. Following that logic you could have OW Rescue then OW5 or OW Rescue5 or 5 courses past rescue. But I totally get from a marketing perspective why that is not appealing even though perhaps more accurate.

 

[boulderjohn]

I would prefer for AOW to be called OW2, simply the second course after OW. Following that logic you could have OW Rescue then OW5 or OW Rescue5 or 5 courses past rescue. But I totally get from a marketing perspective why that is not appealing even though perhaps more accurate.

To be honest, I think (and this is speculation) that the agency feels trapped by a decision made decades ago. Even in the 1990s, when I got my AOW, they were calling it Adventures in Diving, and although the card says "Advanced," that term was minimized. I think they regret using that term then, but after I don't know how many millions of AOW cards issued, and with just about every other agency also issuing cards with that name, it's tough to make a change.

I think something like that is going on with MSD as well. I know from an article I read years ago that the idea for MSD was based on the Boy Scout model for rank advancement--collect a certain number of merit badges to achieve the next rank. Back when that decision was made, there weren't much more than 5 specialties in existence, so someone who got 5 specialties had pretty much exhausted all available training. There were no tech diving agencies then, either. Tech diving really did not exist, in fact.

The world has changed since then, but the names and requirements for the certifications have not.

 

[WheelsUSN]

I would prefer for AOW to be called OW2, simply the second course after OW. Following that logic you could have OW Rescue then OW5 or OW Rescue5 or 5 courses past rescue. But I totally get from a marketing perspective why that is not appealing even though perhaps more accurate.

My first two C-cards are for NAUI OW I and NAUI OW II, but they changed the names of the certs sometime between when I earned them and now and they use titles similar to those that PADI uses now.

To be honest, I think (and this is speculation) that the agency feels trapped by a decision made decades ago. Even in the 1990s, when I got my AOW, they were calling it Adventures in Diving, and although the card says "Advanced," that term was minimized. I think they regret using that term then, but after I don't know how many millions of AOW cards issued, and with just about every other agency also issuing cards with that name, it's tough to make a change.

I received my PADI AOW in '86 and the card said advanced then. I don't know what the course was called at that time, when I completed NAUI OW II the instructor offered the PADI card for an additional $15 since he was an instructor for both agencies.

 

[Abdullah]

It's not that I forgot the audience (that's an important part of rhetoric, and has been for 1000s of years, e.g., Cicero's De Oratore makes the point); it is just that I don't care in this case about hooking the audience. I only wanted to point out the nature of stipulative definitions. I wrote not to entertain or market,

If people are not interested in looking up the meaning of words they don't know or to follow the details either due to a lack of time, will or intellect, it is their prerogative to remain amongst the οἱ πολλοί. I wrote not to entertain or market.

But I suppose it is that attitude that is part of the reason why SCUBA course content has declined, been truncated or simplified and the books written at a grade 5 or 6 reading level littered with 'and/or': many people care not for complexity, for the subtle understanding fine distinctions enable, neither for the aesthetics of knowledge, but only for the easy, the immediate and what is of short term utility sweetly packaged as info- or edutainment.

I shall, therefore, lower my expectations; but not my standards.

p.s.: why are PADI books littered with 'and/or' (I saw it several times in the Nitrox course book)? I asked my instructor about this but I don't think he understood the point. Does PADI proofread? 'And' means both are necessary while 'or' means one is sufficient. Of course, 'or' is also inclusive so the 'and' is redundant; and if the 'or' is read exclusively then 'and/or' is inconsistent. 'And/or' is a logical monstrosity:

"In a Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion from 1935, Justice Fowler referred to it as "that befuddling, nameless thing, that Janus-faced verbal monstrosity, neither word nor phrase, the child of a brain of someone too lazy or too dull to know what he did mean." The Kentucky Supreme Court has said it was a "much-condemned conjunctive-disjunctive crutch of sloppy thinkers." Finally, the Florida Supreme Court has held that use of and/or [in a contract] results in a nullity, stating

. . . we take our position with that distinguished company of lawyers who have condemned its use. It is one of those inexcusable barbarisms which were sired by indolence and damned by indifference, and has no more place in legal terminology than the vernacular of Uncle Remus has in Holy Writ. I am unable to divine how such senseless jargon becomes current. The coiner of it certainly had no appreciation for terse and concise law English."

One would think with PADI's money they could hire a better writer. And I would think that given the amount of money needed to be spent to meet all the conditions for PADI MSD PADI would just toss in the card for free.

MT

Clearly these are not the writings of a Lean Six Sigma practitioner. Bottom line up front works for most people in most professions.

A long winded argument is often a contraindication of real knowledge. A truly knowledgeable source can be both clear and succinct in his argument. There's no reason for scuba training to be other than clear and succinct.

 

[modustollens]

John, interesting history.

In the 90's when I had my OW, the next course was always called AOW - though this was not PADI's scheme. Which agency was the first to use 'advanced'? I was looking at GUE courses and hoping to take GUE-F - I don't recall seeing that term, or master, in GUE's schema.

I thought the MSD was something rather new?

When I first saw the schema of certifications for PADIMSD I thought I would get that MSD card given that I was taking additional courses for my own reasons anyway. I like studying and diving with people more experienced than I given my goals. But the card really does not add anything. Perhaps if there was some sort of comprehensive exam it would seem less like a marketing gimmick and more like something with meaning.

But I think that what has made people critical is that 'master' sounds a bit pretentious given the small number of dives required (relative to a fellow with 1000s of dives or hundreds of dives, for example) and if one fails to take special note of its merely stipulative character. When I first took my OW the AOW required 50 dives as a prerequisite. But now, in this scheme, one can be a 'master' in only 60.

"There's no reason for scuba training to be other than clear and succinct." True, though I wonder what would be the absolute standard of clarity or brevity? Still, clear and short are not enough - it also needs to be sufficient; and this is the issue with PADI MSD - for, ignoring the merely stipulative nature of it, does the conditions stipulated actually denote mastery? Many have said no.

Clarity and being short or succinct must not come at the expense of sufficiency. But like fast, good or cheap, one often can only choose two. Many of the critical claims of this card I read in the posts in this thread have not been about how efficiently or succinctly concepts are clearly explained, but rather with how many concepts are clearly explained succinctly (e.g, the 'advanced' course with little or no rescue).

After reading the stuff on this site about this PADI MSD I am less interested in the 'PADI MSD challenge' when compared to the GUE-F course (something I learned about on this site). GUE-F is much more expensive but seems more value for the money.

MT

 

[chrpai]

Some people just like to try to come off as smart and be impressed with the tomes that they produce. Yawn...

---------- Post added April 17th, 2013 at 02:33 PM ----------

After reading the stuff on this site about this PADI MSD I am less interested in the 'PADI MSD challenge' when compared to the GUE-F course (something I learned about on this site). GUE-F is much more expensive but seems more value for the money.

No disagreement there except it's not more expensive. Even if you go PADI OW -> AOW -> Nitrox -> Rescue ( a decent path ) you still need 4 more specs and the PMD fee. That's around $1000. GUE-F is less expensive then that. I'm pretty sure I'm going to learn / be challenged more in GUE-F.

 

[James R]

No disagreement there except it's not more expensive. Even if you go PADI OW -> AOW -> Nitrox -> Rescue ( a decent path ) you still need 4 more specs and the PMD fee. That's around $1000. GUE-F is less expensive then that. I'm pretty sure I'm going to learn / be challenged more in GUE-F.

Of course GUE-F will challenge you more if you take it, as it should!

You aren't comparing like to like here, though. GUE-F is not for a brand new diver with zero dive training. A majority of the MSD path is designed to take new, untrained, divers from open water to proficient.

 

[modustollens]

Some people just like to try to come off as smart and be impressed with the tomes that they produce. Yawn...

---------- Post added April 17th, 2013 at 02:33 PM ----------



No disagreement there except it's not more expensive.

Your assuming, falsely, I was comparing the cost of the GUE-F to the whole gambit for Padi-MSD. I was thinking of the cost of the MSD card alone.

But, as you say, some people try.

 

[Oldbear]

I just said it was a possibility not a probability. Hopefully any diver that really wants the training isn't going to cheat himself out of the experience. But I still believe it could happen. I do know of someone who went to a local dive site and went down to one of the platforms at 15 feet and would sit there for 20 minutes, make an ascent and then descend again and count it as a dive so he could pad his dive count to be eligible to start DM training. He logged 12 dives in one day.

This is called "teabagging." It is common enough to have a nickname.

Yet another reason to not bother counting dives....

Let's hope that the only person who the "teabagger" is hurting is themselves...

 

[nimoh]

I think from a training and skills perspective you would get more from GUE-F. However, it is still not equivalent to MSD.

You can't go into GUE-F with no certification, you would need at a minimum OW. The cost of OW+Fundies is still less than OW+AOW+Rescue+5 Specialties. However, many dive operations require AOW for deep dives below 60' and Fundies won't qualify you for this (GUE-F max depth is 60'). Many dive operations also need to see a nitrox card before diving nitrox, and won't accept a Fundies card for this even though all Fundies training dives are 32%.